1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a page information display method and device, and in particular to a page information display method and device for displaying electronic information in a unit of page of predetermined size.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, the information required for the work, study or life is provided from the origins of information to the reader, using media such as books, or periodical publications, e.g., newspaper or magazines or the like. Also, the administrative or judicial information is provided in publications or documents.
In recent years, the Internet (Inter Network) by a TCP/IP has been well prepared to enable computers for the government, company, college, and individual to be interconnected directly or via a telephone network. With the development of providing the information via the Internet, a variety of information is created as an ML page (e.g., HTML page or XML page) created on the basis of a makeup language, which allows this page (typically referred to as a home page) to be accessed by using a computer. To provide the ML page, a large amount of documents are created in a PDF format, and can be downloaded from respective home pages. Just as a patent gazette is provided in CD-ROM, the important information may be publicized or circulated in the computer readable medium other than the Internet.
The information provided in a format accessible using a computer may include information contents from a wide variety of information sources covering data sheets of products manufactured by the company, the information of new products, documents created by the administration, pieces of legislation in making, the Supreme Court gists, research results of the college laboratory, detailed information of lodgings in a certain region, news, weather forecasts, for example. These maybe duplicately provided in other paper media such as newspaper columns, magazines, or catalogues, but simply provided through the Internet or in the computer readable medium. Most of the past information may be often difficult to obtain substantially in paper media.
As the information infrastructures such as the Internet are prepared throughout the world in the future, more informatization will penetrate into the society increasingly. Thereby, it is apprehended that there occurs a personal difference in the amount or quality of necessary information between the user familiar with the computer and the user unfamiliar with the computer.
Means for operating the computer may be a graphical user interface (GUI, hereinafter referred to as a desktop metaphor) useful in most cases, which is metaphoric to the working environment of desk in the actual world. Through the user interface in the desktop metaphor, the working environment of desk is comically drawn to allow a file structure specific to the computer which is nonobjective and uneasy to understand to correspond with something present in the working environment of desk such as a file or folder. Thus, the computer beginners can operate the computer intuitively. For example, to delete a file, the file indicated by an icon which is metaphoric to paper is dragged and dropped into a garbage box.
However, through use of the user interface of desktop metaphor, many people in the world may think that the simple operation of gaining access to the electronic information in the computer is difficult. That is, through the user interface of desktop metaphor, it is required to make access to the electronic information by instructing or operating indirectly a virtual device such as buttons drawn on the display of computer, a pop-up menu, or a slide bar, using an input device such as a mouse or keyboard peculiar to the computer.
Object of the Invention
In the conventional examples as described above, there was a drawback that the access of information through the use of a computer was difficult. The operation scheme specific to the computer may take considerable time to master the operation. Thus, everyone can not easily make use of electronic information provided by the computer. Accordingly, there is a personal difference in the quality and amount of information available between the users. If many people feel it difficult to use the computer, the information provider abolishes the paper media for the information necessary to be conveyed and cannot entirely transfer to the electronic information.
For example, it was reported that when a large company introduced a computer system to do all business contacts and settlements of accounts by abolishing the paper media, the preparatory period was set to two years, and one year or more was dedicated to an education period for new staff members to get accustomed to the computer, so that the company fully succeeded in computerization. Some colleges provide computer literacy courses to educate the basic usage of computer. Generally, in the study and training of new staff members in the companies or government offices, the computer operation is educated. They are taught about not only access of the information, but also input and origination of the information. However, for the people who never have used the computer at all, it is a difficult work to simply access the information.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a user interface which is intuitive and easy to operate, rather than a desktop metaphor. Particularly, an information access device which has a simple appearance and enables the operation intended to access the electronic information is promising.
To cope with such a problem, a prior access device which is an improved desktop metaphor was disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-165595. This realizes the appearance of a book on the display unit, and relies on a method of visualizing the electronic information on the display unit by outputting the overlapped pages composed of a plurality of sentences dislocated slightly to the display unit. A heading symbolizing a set of sentences is appended with the content of sentences as a unit of set to improve the desktop metaphor. However, in this conventional example, the amount of information to be displayed increases in proportion to an increase in the number of pages. Therefore, it is often difficult to secure the display area sufficiently. Consequently, there is a problem that the access area is reduced to make the access difficult.
A CRT or a liquid crystal display is becoming higher in resolution year after year. For example, if the resolution of about 150 dpi in A4 size is realized, it is possible to access the whole one face of newspaper in A4 size. That is, if the display has substantially a resolution of facsimile class, the newspaper or magazine is made readable in a size which is smaller than the actual size. In such a high-resolution display, the display of 1200xc3x971600 dots can be made in A4 actual size. Therefore, the physical size becomes too small to be useful for the icon in the conventional operating system, giving an impression of something intricate to the user, possibly resulting in a user interface which is rather uneasy to understand.
Therefore, the development of a user interface in the next generation which can be intuitively used by the computer beginners as well is required. Then, it is desired to adopt a high-resolution display without changing the operation. In other words, it is desired to develop the user interface which is easy to master the operation and not dependent on the resolution.
It is an object of the present invention to resolve the inconveniences associated with the conventional example, and to provide a user interface for enabling access to the information which is easily understood by all people, irrespective of the computer experiences.
Therefore, the present invention adopts a user interface having a metaphor like a book, newspaper or magazine. To realize the metaphor of this book, the electronic information is allowed to access in a unit of page of predetermined size. That is, the electronic information is displayed in a unit of page of predetermined size in an information access area of a display unit. And there is only a single information access area and the page can not be turned physically, unlike books. But a user interface which is metaphoric to the operation of turning over pages enables the information access area to be effectively used. This invention has a new feature in the user interface metaphoric to the operation of turning over pages, as will be detailed later.
Based on the above described analysis, and in order to accomplish the aforementioned object, the present invention provides a page information display method for displaying the electronic information using an information access device comprising a storage unit for storing the electronic information having plural pages of information in a unit of page of predetermined size, a display unit for displaying the electronic information stored in the storage unit in the unit of page, and an operation unit for inputting an operation to gain access to the page information, the operation unit being provided in the substantially same area as the display unit, and the method comprises: a page turning operation detecting step of outputting a page turning operation detecting signal when a dragging is made on the operation unit in parallel or anti-parallel to a predefined page turning direction at a current page read from the storage unit that is to be displayed at present; a next display page setting step of setting a preceding page or a succeeding page immediately before or after the current page depending on a direction of the dragging operation to a next display page to be displayed at the next time, when the page turning operation detecting signal is detected in the page turning operation detecting step; and a page turning process step of displaying the next display page set in the next display page setting step in place of the current page on the display unit.
The operation unit, which is provided in the substantially same area as the display unit, corresponds to a touch panel or a computer display, for example. When a dragging is made in a page turning direction on this operation unit, in other words, a dragging operation to press a mouse button and hold it down while moving the pointer in a page turning direction (or an opposite direction), and release the mouse button is performed, a page turning operation detecting signal is output in the page turning operation detecting step. In the next display page setting step, a preceding page or a succeeding page of the current page is set as a next display page, depending on a direction of dragging operation. If the next display page is set, the next display page is displayed in place of the current page on the display unit in the page turning process step. In this way, when a dragging operation is performed in parallel or anti-parallel to the page turning direction, a page turning process is effected one page by one page in accordance with the direction of that dragging operation. Therefore, it is possible to turn over pages of the electronic information with the same operation as the motion of the user""s hand.